Faerie Lights
by Aoife-hime
Summary: [Sam x Jack] In the aftermath, he watches as she breaks. Set Season 6.


A/N: Believe it or not, I was actually quite happy when I wrote this - I blame Frou Frou and e.e. cummings for the mood. Also, this was a bit of a writing style experiment for me.

**Faerie Lights**

They ask them to stay. Jack isn't sure why, exactly. These people have been on good terms with Earth for years now, but SG-1 hasn't visited this planet for a few years. He's sure if he sees any of the kids he remembers from his first trip here, they won't look remotely the same. That's only _if_ he sees them; chances are they're dead now. Because his team wasn't able to save the city, he thinks bitterly, automatically side-stepping a still-smoldering pile of rubble and dirt. They'd promised to do so and failed. A small part of Jack realizes there is little SG-1 could have done; the firefight had been long underway by the time they arrived. They had been too little, too late. Still, as he trudges through the churned mud of the main thoroughfare, he and his team are greeted by grateful smiles, faces coated with grime and streaked by tears, and once even a small, wilted flower offered by a tiny girl with someone else's blood smudged along her cheeks and hands. He watches as the child offers the token to Carter, her eyes soulful and serious as she does.

Jack thinks no child should ever have a gaze with that much gravity. And from the way Carter's hand shakes ever so slightly as she accepts the gift, he thinks she probably feels similarly.

He remains perfectly still in those next few moments, watching her twirl the flower thoughtfully between her now-grimy fingers until the smell of rain-soaked burnt flesh filters through to his brain and he realizes here is no place to stop and contemplate lives lost and jobs not well done. Villagers are beginning to stare now, too, from windows and alleyways and Jack orders his team forward with little more than a swift inclination of his head before the indistinct murmurings he can make out through the whisper of rain become something more concrete.

Fat, heavy raindrops find their way under the collar of his jacket and trail unpleasantly down his back, and the cut on his hand begins to throb in earnest. He focuses on those sensations, memorizing the sharp prickle of pain around his gash when he clenches and unclenches his fingers and the feel of the rapidly-warming water trailing over the bumps of his spine. The mud seeping through the tops of his boots, the trails of smoke threatening to clog his lungs, the icy chill of the wind that finds its way around corners of buildings, all these things serve to distract his mind from the memories threatening to surface in the aftermath of the day. Memories from a time he would rather forget and at the same time would die if he ever did forget.

Behind him, he is almost certain he hears the quiet sound of someone sniffling. He chalks it up to the lovely weather they're experiencing at the moment and keeps walking.

//\//\//\//\//\//\//\//\//\//\//\//\//\//

The ceremony is held in a field not far removed from where the main battle took place. He can easily make out the spots where staff blast scorch marks mar the bucolic scenery, where dark blotches indicate not shadows, but rather where an innocent man, woman, or (god forbid) child breathed their last. Further markers of the dead are hidden, however, by the small mass of villagers gathered already.

Jack doesn't know what part he and his team are expected to play in all this; he ends up standing awkwardly stiff at the front of the gathering, Teal'c on his left and Carter on his right. The gun still clipped to his vest feels incongruous in this place of mourning, but he has no other place to put it. He shifts his weight uncomfortably once, twice before the man Jack can only think of as the head priest begins to chant. The voice fills the air, enveloping the small crowd in a sound that, even though the words are incomprehensible to him and his team, fills him with a great sorrow. The sounds the priest makes are unlike anything Jack has ever heard before and he feels a twinge in his chest as his throat constricts involuntarily.

Amidst the heartfelt chants, he thinks he hears another sniffle. This time he looks to his right, but Carter refuses to make eye contact. It could just be rain, but he's almost certain she's been crying. His fingers twitch in her direction, but his hand remains steadfastly at his side.

He doesn't know how long they stand there for, feet sinking into the soft ground, bodies slowly losing heat as the sun lowers in the sky. All Jack registers is that his eyes sting from unshed tears and that he can hear the voices of everyone who called out to him for help during the battle and who, in the end, he couldn't save echoing in his head. Every so often, a wail rises above the chants from somewhere behind him, and the feeling in his chest is akin to being stabbed with a knife.

This time he's positive he hears a sniffle. Carter's eyes are looking redder than usual.

In the end, the priest's voice fades to nothing more than a whisper, hardly louder than the rain still falling around them. There's a different feeling in the air from when the ceremony started: the pain is still there, but it is tempered with acceptance and the beginnings of understanding. Jack is amazed that the priest can accomplish in an afternoon what it once took him years to do.

He looks over to his right, expecting to see Carter where she last was, back as straight and stiff as a rod, gaze focused straight ahead at nothing in particular. But she's not there. It startles him, loath as he is to admit it. Carter is, as she would say, the constant. He's the variable, the one more likely to do something unpredictable like wander off from a funeral ceremony. Carter is logical, Jack is not. Even when Carter is crying, she still is more logical than he is.

Which is why he can't stop the cold chill of surprise from rushing down his spine and settling in his belly when he sees she's not where he expects her to be. In fact, she's not anywhere in sight, and this is troubling to him on more than simply the professional level.

He turns quickly and asks Jonas and then Teal'c if either have seen Major Carter, but both reply in the negative, Jonas's answer accompanied by a very nervous look. Jack tries not to look nearly as anxious as he feels, but try as he might he can't quite stop his fingers from tapping rapidly against his thigh. His eyes scan the dispersing crowd, but they don't catch a glimpse of Carter's damp hat or incongruous BDU's. Cursing silently, he barks into his radio on multiple frequencies for her to report in. All he hears in response is static.

His orders for Jonas and Teal'c to spread out and start looking for her come out probably a little more forcefully than is completely necessary, but he doesn't have time to worry about that. After the events of the day, he can't block the image of Carter lying somewhere just inside the nearby tree line, eyes staring up at the cloud-covered sky and a thin trail of blood spilling from the corner of her mouth. Maybe they didn't kill the last of the Jaffa. Maybe the goa'uld sent more troops back in a surprise attack. Maybe, maybe, maybe…

Jack, as a rule, doesn't deal well with maybes. And at the moment, there are far too many maybes.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Teal'c headed back towards the village while Jonas makes a beeline for the biggest clump of mourning villagers. Jack is satisfied with their choices and stomps determinedly through field and underbrush until he is pushing his way through knotted bushes and tree trunks wider than any he'd ever seen before. The tactical part of his mind realizes he's making himself quite an obvious target; he's making no effort to move stealthily, instead opting to pulverize his way through the underbrush and low-hanging branches.

The part of his mind that is bent on finding his missing teammate tells the tactical part to shut the hell up.

In all honesty, he doesn't know why he automatically goes in the direction of the woods. It would make more sense for Carter to head back in the direction of the gate and the woods are more than a little out of the way. Rationally, he thinks that Teal'c or Jonas will come across her first, and Jack expects the familiar click of his radio to sound anytime now. It doesn't happen, though, and he is getting farther into the woods at this point, the field now barely visible through the space where the bushes don't quite meet the trees' lowest branches.

There's a dim light up ahead, and Jack pauses for a moment. Just a moment, though, because suddenly he can hear sniffling over the steady drip of rain through the trees and he's moving faster than is probably safe through the underbrush towards the source of the noise. It could be anyone, really, but in his gut he's certain it's her.

When he sees her, the first thing he thinks is that she looks beautiful. It's completely inappropriate, but he can't help it. She's kneeling in profile, hands clenched around her now-twisted cap and resting in her lap, gaze focused entirely on the wilted flower she's placed in the ground on top of a small mound. Her face is pale from exhaustion and mourning, there's an angry gash running down the left side of her face (incidentally, the side he can see), she's covered with soot and dirt and other things he doesn't want to put his mind to at the moment, her hair is a damp and dirty mess, and yet to him she looks stunning. Perhaps it has something to do with the light…

And it's at that moment that he realizes there are a couple dozen glowing things flying lazily through the air above Carter's head, brightening up the darkness of a forest at dusk. He can't stop his mind from dredging up memories of those strange light creatures that inhabited that godforsaken moon from a few years ago, but unlike those things, Jack is pretty sure these creatures aren't nearly so malevolent.

She hasn't looked up at him or even acknowledged his presence in the moments he's been studying her and suddenly Jack finds that disconcerting. He calls out to her, trying to inflect the right amount of urgency and understanding in his utterance of her last name. Her shoulders jerk ever so slightly, but she doesn't lift her gaze from the dying little flower the girl in the village presented her with earlier. Jack tries again, her name coming out more as a bark this time than before.

Still nothing. Jack lifts his cap from his head and scrubs hand through his damp hair.

"Sam."

She looks up at him and his breath catches in his chest at what he sees.

In the warm light from the alien fireflies, Carter's face is illuminated partially, the light catching on her cheekbones and the ridge of her nose, casting other parts into shadow. Jack can clearly make out her eyes, and they're as earnest and as sad as those of the girl who'd given her the flower earlier. There's something more there, though, that he has never seen before: a crack of some kind, a sort of flaw revealing to whoever cares to look a glimpse at the pain she's struggling with inside.

He finds that he is slowly lowering himself so that he is eye to eye with her. He wants to say something to her, but there's nothing that seems entirely appropriate, either professionally or personally. Absolutely nothing. As he holds her gaze, he sees the crack widen just a tiny bit, and her eyes begin to look glassy with a fresh round of tears.

Why can't he stop thinking that she looks beautiful?

Carter ends up acting instead him, opening her mouth to form words, but apparently choking on them. Instead, she shuffles forward slightly, still on her knees, and wraps her arms tightly around his torso. His gun is still clipped to his vest, and it's awkward having its uneven edges digging into his ribs and abdomen, but Jack finds himself returning the action in full, his arms carefully moving around her shoulders and pulling her even closer.

She's crying again and he can feel the warm, sticky tears trailing down his neck. He can feel her shake with silent sobs. Absently, he wonders why she's acting like this, but at the same time he can't help but marvel that it took her this long to break this spectacularly. Without even realizing it, Jack's hand starts rubbing slow circles through the thick vest and BDU material.

At some point, her head moves so that it is no longer resting in the crook of his neck, but rather so that their foreheads rest against one another. It's calming, and at the same time surprisingly intimate. Her eyes fill most of his vision now, and the random motion of the fireflies above make them seem to dance. The crack is still there; it will be there for some time, he predicts, but eventually it will heal. Now seems like a good time to say something, he thinks, but again words escape him.

"Thank you," she finally whispers, and if he weren't so close to her he would surely think he merely imagined her saying those words. Suddenly, her head changes angles, her forehead leaving his as she presses her mouth to the corner of his.

He has to work to overcome the instinct to jump away from that kind of contact. Instead, he remains perfectly still, his eyes closing slowly. He's pretty sure his legs are going numb from the position he's in, but he's also completely unwilling for the contact to stop. A sharp, unpleasant taste of metallic grime filters into his mouth but still he makes no move to break away. She started it, and he knows well enough that she has to be the one to end it too.

Which she does, far sooner than he would like. They're looking at each other again, and her eyes are still wide and fragile, but now not nearly as broken. Jack's hand unconsciously moves to his radio, fingers finding the correct buttons without trouble. He tells the others he's found Carter, who has the good grace to look slightly abashed at her unusual behavior. A quick smile in her direction seems to put her more at ease, but he can distinctly see the beginnings of a blush under all the dirt and grime.

They leave the woods in silence. Occasionally, his hand gently brushes against hers, purely by accident. And if her fingers momentarily interlock with his, it's merely because her hands are chilled from the rain and are seeking whatever fleeting warmth they can acquire.

Behind them, fireflies dance above the small memorial marked only by a wilting flower.


End file.
